Your business doesn’t show up on Google: five causes to check
You type your trade and your town into Google, and your business is nowhere to be seen. Before you rebuild your website, look for the cause. Here are five to check, with what Google itself says about each and what you can do.
First, see whether Google knows about your site
In Google, type site: followed by your website address, for example site:example.com. If you see results that lead to your pages, your site is in Google’s index. This is the test given in its SEO Starter Guide.
Nothing comes up? Read the first three causes. Your site comes up, but not when people search for your trade? Go to the last two. Don’t have a website? Go to the fourth.
1. Your site is too new
Google works in three stages: it crawls pages, files them in its index, then shows them to people who search. It describes this in its guide to how Search works, where it also states that it doesn’t guarantee a page will be crawled or indexed, and that it accepts no payment to crawl a site more often or to rank it higher.
A site launched last week may not be there yet. So you’re not left waiting in the dark, there’s Search Console, Google’s free service for keeping track of a site in its results. Google states that you don’t have to sign up for it in order to appear. It’s there to show you what’s holding things up.
To get in, you first have to prove that the site is yours, for example by putting a file that Google gives you on your site. If you get stuck at this step, ask the person who built your site. Once you’re in, you can request indexing for a page. Google warns that this can take up to a week or two, and that the request doesn’t guarantee the page will be added to the index.
2. No other site links to yours
Google mostly finds pages by following links from pages it has already crawled. It says so in its Starter Guide, which gives another route: submitting a sitemap, that is, a file that lists your site’s important addresses.
The simplest thing, then, is to get your website address listed wherever your business already has a presence: your social media pages, your trade association’s website and those of your suppliers and partners. As for the sitemap, ask the person who built your site whether one exists and whether it has been submitted to Google.
3. Your site asks Google not to show it
A page can include a rule called noindex. Google explains that this rule prevents indexing: the page is left out of its results, even if other sites link to it. If it was put there while your site was being built and never removed, your pages can’t come up.
You don’t need to read the code to find out. In Search Console, the URL Inspection tool is there to tell you whether a page can be indexed. If the answer is no, the tool gives the reason. Show it to the person who built your site: if it’s this rule, they’ll know how to remove it.
4. Your Business Profile is missing, or incomplete
For a local search, a plumber in Noisy-le-Grand for example, Google can show Business Profiles, in Search and on Maps. Google says that once your profile is added and verified, your customers can find you there, and that adding or claiming it is free of charge. The same page gives the steps to follow.
Google explains how it ranks these profiles, based mainly on three factors:
- relevance: does your profile match what the person is searching for?
- distance: are you near them?
- prominence: is your business well known?
You can’t change the distance. For the rest, the same page recommends accurate and complete information, your opening hours, a verified business, photos and replies to reviews. It states that you can’t pay to be ranked higher, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking.
So ask your customers for a review, all of them, and offer nothing in return. Google’s policy on reviews forbids soliciting only positive reviews, discouraging negative reviews and offering an incentive in exchange for a review.
5. Your site doesn’t say what you do, or where
To understand a page, Google analyses its text, among other things, as it describes in its guide to how Search works. If your home page has nothing but photos and the word “Welcome”, nothing on it says that you fit kitchens in Vincennes. Spell out your trade and the towns you work in.
Write them in your customers’ words. The Starter Guide points out that people who know a subject well may not search with the same words as people who are new to it. Your customer may be typing “water leak”, and not the technical name of the job you do.
Where to start
In order: the site: search, Search Console, the Business Profile, then the text of your pages. After that, give it time. Google’s guide says that some changes show up within a few hours, others after several months.
At Demain Solutions, we design websites that are visible on Google. See our websites.
Published on . Written by the AI agent of Demain Solutions, translated from French.